Chocolate Chip Cookies from Wishes and Dishes - Levain Bakery copycat

Levain Bakery copycat Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough July 30, 2017 from Wishes and Dishes

I go through periods of clearing out the baking shelves in my pantry. Which means, I try to use up the ingredients I have without buying more so I can actually empty the shelves once in awhile. It’s a good practice so your ingredients are rotated through and used up properly and nothing’s allowed to go past its expiration date. For me, even though I bake quite often, it’s harder than it sounds because I’m a baking ingredient hoarder. I hate to run out of anything because you never know when the baking gods will smite me and propel me into the kitchen to bake something. In that mood, I don’t want to be out of anything.

What I tend to have a good amount of is – no surprise – chocolate. In multiple forms. I have unsweetened chocolate (big bag of Scharffenberger baking squares), semisweet chocolate chips (Costco-sized Tollhouse morsels), multiple packs of milk chocolate chips (Ghirardelli, Guittard, Nestle), bittersweet chocolate bars (Valrhona and Lindt), cocoa powder (my beloved Pernigotti) and a slab of Trader Joe’s Pound Plus milk chocolate. The latter is what I wanted to use up for this recipe.

Since I don’t believe in small or bite-sized chocolate chip cookies (who does??), I planned on making behemoth cookies (think 1/3 cup measure per cookie) so it seemed suitable to cut up the milk chocolate slab into chunks and use it for this recipe. Big chunks to go with big cookies, I say.

This is another Levain Bakery copycat but I have to admit mine didn’t come out like the original blog’s or like Levain’s. For one thing, mine spread too much. They still stayed thick but they were not mounded-chubby thick. I’m not sure why unless my butter got too warm as I was a trifle late in mixing it and the dough was a bit soft. So even though I froze the dough and baked from frozen dough, these still spread. They also, to my sorrow, were too sweet. I don’t say that often and I don’t know if my taste buds were off but rest assured, I tried two different cookies on two different baking days and the results were the same: sweeeeeeet. Which is a little odd because the recipe ingredients were not out of whack with other copycats and other chocolate chip cookies in general. I didn’t miscount the amount of sugar I added either. So it could be my taste buds had had enough sugar for the moment (you don’t know how much that thought fills me with horror. And denial).

However, I baked the rest of the cookies off for friends I met for dinner one night and distributed them via treat bags for them and their families and they loved them. I either have really polite, well-manned friends (totally possible) or it was just me (also possible). In either case, if I make this recipe again, I would probably go with semisweet or dark chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate to balance some of the sweetness.

1 cup cold butter

1 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup turbinado sugar (or can substitute 1/4 cup granulated sugar)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups chocolate chips or chunks

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.
2. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until just combined after each addition. Mix in vanilla.
3. Stir in flours, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. Mix until just combined; do not overmix. Fold in chocolate chips or chunks.
4. Portion into large dough balls and flatten slightly into thick discs. Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 410 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough discs, giving them room to spread. 
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until edges are golden brown and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet for 5-10 minutes until set. Remove to wire racks until cooled completely.

Fried Cornbread

Fried Cornbread - made July 30, 2017 from The Southern Lady Cooks

After my hoecake experiment, I went a little more boldly into “southern cooking” with this recipe for fried cornbread. Actually, maybe not so boldly because I did modify the recipe slightly. I don’t have good luck with southern recipes. That’s not just my assessment but I’ve been told flat out from people from the South that I don’t really know true Southern cooking or baking. Harsh (and sometimes delivered rudely) but fair enough since I’m not from the South and wasn’t raised there but still I try. And I’m always willing to learn.

This recipe is from a blog called The Southern Lady Cooks so I’m trusting in the name and the recipe. The part I didn’t go bold on is I couldn’t bring myself to use all that oil as called for in the recipe. It essentially calls for deep frying the cornbread. I still wanted to use my griddle rather than a high-sided frying pan so I didn’t use all that oil but did generously grease the griddle with oil. Okay, I know, it’s not the same thing but that was a lot of oil.

Straying from the directions and not going all-in probably disqualifies me from true Southern cooking once and for all. The fried cornbread actually did taste like cornbread but I think I fried it too long and it seemed dry. And heavy. The batter was really thick. It also didn’t have as much flavor as I had hoped but it seemed really salty. Maybe my non-Southern taste buds veer more towards my sweet tooth than people from the South. Or I’m just not a cornbread person, fried or baked. Oh well, I tried.

1 1/2 cup self-rising cornmeal

2/3 cups buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup oil for cooking

1. Mix together cornmeal, buttermilk, egg and salt. Drop by spoonfuls into hot oil. Brown on one side then turn and fry until golden brown on both sides. Serve warm with butter.

Buttermilk Pound Cake

Buttermilk Pound Cake - made July 30, 2017 Chocolate, Chocolate and More

You can tell right off from the pictures that this cake did not come out of the bundt cake cleanly. Despite my efforts of loosening the sides with a small spatula, loosening the cake from the center metal protrusion that makes up the bundt cake hole, inverting it while it was still warm but not hot, yada yada, the top curves did not want to leave the pan so the cake left the top stubbornly sticking to the pan instead. Yeah, not one of my finest cake efforts. As Mary Berry would say, “it looks a little informal”. Yes, I’ve been binge watching the Great British Bakeoff on PBS.

Taste-wise, though, this was a pretty good butter pound cake. Technically it’s a buttermilk pound cake but it also had a fair amount of butter in it so you can go either way. The texture was dense with a tight but soft crumb, like any good pound cake. I didn’t underbake it as I’m wont to do with cakes so while it was dense, it wasn’t heavy. Use fresh butter (don’t even think about margarine) and amp it up with vanilla bean paste if you have some on hand. If you don’t, an extra teaspoon of vanilla won’t hurt.

What I like about a simple, plain pound cake is it’s really durable in the heat of summer. No need to worry about frosting melting or spoiling the cake. Just plain vanilla, buttery goodness. If you don’t want it so plain, you can dress it up with fresh berries, whipped cream or ice cream if you choose as this makes a nice backdrop for any of those add-ins.

1 cup butter, room temperature

2 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly coat a Bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Cream butter and sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix briefly to combine.
4. Whisk together flour and baking soda. Alternately add the flour mixture with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour in three additions. Do not overmix.
5. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 60-70 minutes or until toothpick inserted in thickest part of cake comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then loosen the sides with a small spatula and turn over onto a cake plate to cool completely.

Hoecakes

Hoecakes - made July 29, 2017 from Food Network

My niece gave me a cast iron griddle. She knew both my penchant for cast iron cookware and anything made in the USA so it was a perfect gift. I’ve never owned a griddle before. That might be surprising but I always made pancakes in a frying pan so I didn’t think I was missing out. But it was fun to play with my new griddle, placing it so it straddled two burners and I could use the span of my stove.

She and I had fun texting back and forth on the various things that could be made on a griddle: grilled cheese sandwiches, flatbread pizza, Monte Cristo sandwiches, quesadillas, hash browns, hush puppies, everything for breakfast (sausage, eggs, toast, etc). But one of the first things that came to mind was, of course, pancakes. I veered off the traditional path and decided for the maiden voyage of my cast iron griddle, I would do “hoecakes”.

As a kid, I just about memorized the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and I remembered Ma Ingalls making hoecakes on a “spider” (a frying pan with legs set over a fire or coals). Laura always made those hoecakes sound so good. I found this recipe on Food Network, as contributed by Bobby Deen so I decided to give it a try. It had the added advantage of using self-rising cornmeal and self-rising flour. I normally wouldn’t have either ingredient on hand but some time ago, I had broken down and purchased White Lily flour on amazon. It was criminally expensive for flour but White Lily isn’t something I ever see in my part of the country (it’s predominantly available in the South, I’m told) so online was my only option.

Other side of the griddle

I ordered two 5-lb bags of the self-rising flour, thinking to make biscuits and cakes, having heard so much about the lightness of baked goods made with White Lily flour. Alas, the seller I bought the flour from sent me two 5-lb bags of self-rising cornmeal instead. I offered to send it back in exchange for the correct order but the seller apologized, told me to keep the cornmeal and promptly sent me the correct flour. I was sure I could use the White Lily flour eventually but I didn’t know what to do with 10 pounds of self-rising cornmeal (I’m not THAT much of a cornbread fan) so I donated one of the 5-lb bags to my local food bank and kept the other.

So I had what I needed to make hoecakes. Now, I’m not entirely sure what I expected hoecakes to be or taste like. They came out looking like pancakes. In fact, they ended up tasting like pancakes except for a slight grit from the cornmeal. They weren’t sweet, they were a little heavy-textured and they tasted fine with butter. I followed the recipe to a T so presumably they were hoecakes, at least according to Food Network and Bobby Deen. I’m not sure Laura or Ma Ingalls would agree though. On the plus side, I got to break in my new cast iron griddle. And I love it.

1 cup self-rising cornmeal
1 cup self-rising flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon water
2 eggs

1. Heat cast iron griddle over low heat. 
2. Whisk together cornmeal, flour and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine butter, oil, water and eggs. Add to dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
3. When griddle is hot, grease with butter or oil. Pour 1/4 cup batter for each hoecake. Fry until golden brown, flip over and fry until golden brown. Serve warm with butter.

Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies

Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies - made July 23, 2017 from Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

This is a simple brownie recipe you can easily accommodate for peanut butter lovers or non peanut butter lovers. For the first group, include the peanut butter layer over the brownie and under the ganache. For the second, simply omit that layer. Either way, you’re going to have a fudgy brownie with a rich chocolate topping.

Brownie base

Peanut butter layer

I’m not sure why I keep making peanut butter desserts when I feel obliged to point out with every peanut-butter-related post how indifferent I am to peanut butter. In this case, I made this brownie, partly because I’ve been sitting on this recipe for awhile and partly because, due to poor planning and perusal of my pantry, I had somehow ended up with three jars of peanut butter, two of which had a scoop of peanut butter in them. Don’t you hate that? So I had to make something with peanut butter just to clean out those two jars and open the third and final one. Thankfully they were not Costco-sized jars; I finally learned to stop buying those two-packs when – ahem – I’m indifferent to peanut butter.

Shiny ganache glaze

Because it essentially has three layers, this is one of the rare times I wouldn't make a thick brownie base. Otherwise the whole thing put together would be a little too awkward to consume. I was almost surprised at how shiny my chocolate ganache glaze turned out to be. I had just watched an episode of The Great British Baking Show on PBS where the contestants were challenged to make a cake that had a "mirror glaze". Mirror as in shiny surface rather than mirror where you can see your face reflected back at you when you gaze at the top of the cake. Whaddaya know, I made a shiny glaze. Which I then proceeded to cover with toffee bits. They're optional but add them if you want a little more decadence and crunch.

And, fortunately for me, the people around me are not as “meh” about peanut butter as I am and gladly received my baking experiment. The brownie part was good, the peanut butter part was fine (for peanut butter lovers) and the ganache topping was rich (if you use the good chocolate). So overall, I think this was a decent brownie. If you really want to punch up the peanut butter flavor and cut some of the richness of the ganache, top it with chopped toasted peanuts for a little extra crunch and flavor.

Brownies

1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, cold
1 cup (136 grams) all-purpose flour
1 cup roasted salted peanuts, coarsely chopped, optional

Frosting and Glaze
1 cup chunky peanut butter (not natural or old-fashioned)
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature, divided
2/3 cup (80 grams) confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (I left it out)
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13" pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Brownies: Melt the butter and chocolate in the top half of a double boiler over hot, barely simmering water. Whisk until melted and smooth.
3. Remove pan from the heat and whisk in the sugar, followed by the vanilla and salt. Beat in cold eggs, one at a time, whisking vigorously until each is incorporated.
4. Fold in the flour and peanuts, if using. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top with metal spatula. Bake for 28 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool to room temperature.
5. Frosting: In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the peanut butter and 4 tablespoons of butter on medium speed until well blended and smooth.  Beat in the confectioners' sugar, salt and nutmeg then milk and vanilla. 
6. Using an offset metal spatula, spread the frosting evenly over the top of the brownies.
7. Glaze: Cut the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter into 8 pieces and melt with chocolate in the top half of a double boiler set over hot, barely simmering water. Heat, stirring constantly until butter and chocolate have melted into a smooth, shiny glaze.
8. Spoon the glaze evenly over the frosting and, using an offset spatula, cover the surface evenly. Refrigerate the brownies until the frosting and glaze have set, about 90 minutes. Use the foil overhang to lift the brownies out of the pan and cut into squares on a cutting board.

Jumbo Sugar Cookies

Jumbo Sugar Cookies - made dough July 22, 2017, adapted from Center Cut Cook

I don’t know what compelled me to make these cookies other than it was hot outside, I didn’t want to turn my oven on at that moment and it’s just easy to make cookie dough and freeze it for later when it is cool enough to turn my oven on. So that’s what I did.

Since these are supposed to be jumbo cookies, I used the 1/3 cup measuring cup that was suggested in the recipe and ended up with 5 big chunks of cookie dough from the whole batch. I also read the comments on the original blog and there seemed to be some negative reviews of this recipe, notably how they tasted “tinny” or metallic. That usually comes from having too much chemical leavening so I cut back on both the amount of baking soda and cornstarch. Cornstarch doesn’t really leaven a cookie but instead adds to the softness of its texture. Still, 2 tablespoons seemed like a lot for such a modest amount of dough so I cut it down to 1 tablespoon. I also took the precaution of adding vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste to make sure the cookies had some kind of flavoring.

For the most part, the modification seemed to work. The cookie did spread to a size bigger than my palm and almost overflowed the saucer I used. Yep, it’s jumbo all right. The edges were light and airy, the (thin) middle was chewy. Surprisingly for a sugar cookie, it didn’t seem that sweet. I did sprinkle first turbinado sugar then regular granulated sugar on top before and after baking to give it a little more sweetness. It also did have a little of that tinny taste so I can see where the reviews came from if other people used the full amount of baking soda.

Still, the cookie was okay. Next time I probably wouldn’t make them so big though. “Jumbo” sounds good in theory but in reality, it’s a little too big for a taste test cookie and it’s a lot of one kind of cookie for someone to eat if you want to put more than one in a goodie bag. Also, I'd recommend rolling the whole dough ball in granulated sugar before baking to add a little more flavor and sweetness, not to mention to counter the tinny taste.

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
Coarse sugar for sprinkling

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Add egg, vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste; mix until just combined.
2. Add flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt. Mix until just combined.
3. Portion dough using 1/3 cup measuring cup and form into thick discs. Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Space three discs per sheet, leaving room for the cookies to spread. Sprinkle each disc with coarse sugar. Bake for 14-16 minutes or until edges are lightly golden brown and middles are no longer raw. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes on baking sheets before removing to wire rack to cool completely.

Sweet Potato Noodle Buns

Sweet Potato Noodle Buns - made July 15, 2017 from Cake Spy

One of the recipes that contributed to my impulse to buy a spiralizer was this one for sweet potato noodle buns. Click on the post title to see the original blog post and see what I mean when you view the pictures. Looks good, right?

Mine didn’t turn out quite so beautifully. I tried. This time around, I used a regular orange sweet potato instead of the white ones and I spiralized regular-size noodles instead of angel hair. I thought I would have enough swoodles by only using half a sweet potato but after I had pan-fried the first half, the swoodles had cooked down and I was plagued by a bout of insecurity that there wouldn’t be enough for 2 buns. So I spiralized the other half of the sweet potato and ended up with more swoodles.

I used two shallow, round ramekins to form the “buns”. Although the original directions didn’t say to, I lined the ramekins with plastic wrap with enough overhang that when I patted the swoodles into each ramekins, I could cover with the overhanging plastic wrap and smooth the tops. Then the swoodles were protected when I further pressed them down with canned goods. Lastly, once they had been pressed down for 30 minutes, I just undid the plastic wrap and lifted out the round swoodle buns with the plastic wrap and could up-end them directly into the heated frying pan, keeping their bun shape intact.

Key learning when making swoodle buns: make sure you cook the swoodles well enough before pressing into the ramekins. The pan-frying once they’re shaped into buns should only be to cook the egg binding them together and crisp up the outside but you want the insides soft and cooked. There’s nothing I dislike more than uncooked sweet potatoes.

Second key learning: plan to flip these only once. Since they’re literally noodles of sweet potato, you don’t want to handle them a lot or they might fall apart. Mine were great at first but since I hadn’t cooked all of the swoodles well enough, I pan-fried them a little longer and also turned them over a few times. They survived the first couple of flips then started to show their displeasure at my (over)handling by loosening up a few swoodles from the pack to taunt me. Little buggers.

Third key learning: you actually don’t want to make the buns too thick or use too many swoodles. It makes for an unwieldly thick burger if you do.

Despite my amateur hour with the buns, this turned out pretty well. I liked the contrast between the savory burger and the sweetness of the swoodle buns. And, in line with my prior experience with spiralizing sweet potatoes, they’re quite filling so once again, I ended up eating less because the whole thing was too much in one sitting.

1 medium to large sweet potato, peeled and ends cut flat
2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
1 large egg
pinch of kosher salt
pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Two 3/4 cup ramekins, lightly sprayed with nonstick cooking spray and/or lined with parchment paper

1. Using a spiralizer, cut the sweet potato into thin strands.
2. In a large skillet, heat 1/2 teaspoon olive oil over medium heat. Add sweet potato and cook, stirring, for 5 to 7 minutes or until softened. Let cool to room temperature, about 15 minutes.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk egg. Stir in sweet potato, salt and pepper. Divide between prepared ramekins, filling each about halfway, and pressing the sweet potato down into the ramekins. Cover with plastic wrap and place a heavy can or jar on top of the wrap to weight down the sweet potato. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. Lightly coat a skillet with the remaining oil and beat over medium high heat. Remove plastic wrap and invert ramekins to slide noodle buns onto skillet. Cook, turning once, for 3 to 5 minutes per side, or until golden brown on both sides and hot in the center.

Hamburger patties
1 pound lean ground beef
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon prime rib rub
1 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 large egg

1. Combine ingredients together and pat into 4 round patties. Wrap individually in foil and freeze until ready to fry.
2. If frying immediately, lightly spray a frying pan with nonstick cooking spray and heat over medium high heat. Fry burgers until desired doneness.

Spaghetti with Swoodles

Spaghetti with Swoodles - made July 10, 2017

I have a new gadget. Total impulse purchase which I don’t usually do. Normally I waffle, dither and dink around before I buy myself something. I used to be a shopper and shopped myself to quite a number of acquisitions. Then, after I purged half my stuff, there was a period where I went the opposite direction and hardly bought myself anything at all. That was my “sackcloth and ashes” martyrdom period. Most recently, I’ve managed to (mostly) strike a balance between not overindulging myself and not being a martyr. If I wanted something, was going to use it and it didn’t cost half an arm or a quarter of a leg, I usually would buy it after an extended thinking-about-it period.

I blame my friend Donna for this. She posted a mouthwatering picture of what looked like honest-to-goodness noodles stir fried with chicken and some kind of green stuff (spinach? Basil?). It looked great and was healthy. Turns out those noodles weren’t pasta noodles but instead were made out of white sweet potatoes (Japanese sweet potatoes, my favorite) that had been spiralized. But they looked so real as noodles.

I don’t have a gluten intolerance or anything and I like pasta just fine. But I also love sweet potatoes and was intrigued by this whole spiralizing concept. I looked up recipes on pinterest, I read foodie blogs that showcased fantastic-looking dishes and, like a hapless person staring into the glittery eyes of a cobra, mesmerized by its depths, my trigger finger clicked, depositing the item into my online shopping cart. A few days later, I had a spiralizer sitting on my counter.

At first I circled it like it was a cobra itself, there for a purpose but tentative to approach in case it bit me. It had blades and weird cutouts in those blades that promised different sizes of “noodles”. There were instructions on what to do with root vegetables to get to that spiral noodle stage. Remember that I don’t really cook often or well. This wasn’t a baking gadget per se. It involved cooking. But I can read and the instructions were simple so this turned out to be a pretty straightforward endeavor.

Peel the sweet potato, cut off ends, cut in half, anchor one half on the pointy-wheel thingie, clamp the handle so the sweet potato kisses the blade and start turning. By trial and error, I was able to make angel hair “noodles” or “swoodles” – sweet potato noodles. It was pretty easy and didn’t require as much muscle power as some of the blogs had led me to believe. All that working out with weights paid off.

While, after half a sweet potato, I could spiralize with the best of them, I was a little more inept when it came to actually cooking the swoodles. At first I tried pan-frying them with a little olive oil. That worked decently well but it’s not that easy to pan fry swoodles and not have some of them burn while the others weren’t cooked through. Ask me how I know. For the swoodles made from the second half of the sweet potato (I cooked it in two batches as I had a pretty big sweet potato to start with), I boiled them instead. That sort of worked but you can’t over-boil them or you’ll end up with mashed swoodles, aka mashed sweet potatoes.

To uphold the swoodle look, I made a spaghetti sauce so I could lend verisimilitude to the whole noodle concept. Overall, it turned out okay. If you like a little more flavor or spice, add some additional pepper to the sauce or top the noodles with your favorite sauce. This was pretty healthy, more so than my usual fare. It helped that the swoodles turned out to be more filling than pasta noodles so I was able to eat a smaller portion and still feel satisfied.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound ground turkey
1/2 sweet onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
1 15.5-ounce can kidney beans, drained
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dried basil
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 large Japanese white sweet potato, spiralized then sauteed until soft

1. Heat olive oil in large skillet and saute onions until soft. Add garlic and saute until lightly browned. Add ground turkey and stir until browned. Add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, kidney beans spices and sugar.
2. Simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Top swoodles with sauce and serve warm.